Gender discrimination in Bangladesh beings at birth. Most parents want to have children so that they can, when they are older, supplement their family income and/or help with the domestic work. In the existing socio-economic set-up, male children are best suited to this purpose. So, girls are born to an unwelcome world. However, they are assigned, rather confined to domestic chores. Some of these girls may be at school. But all the work – domestic or academic – sports as soon as they are married off, which is the prime concern of the parents about their daughters.
This discriminatory treatment has some long-term negative effects on the body and mind of the girl children and women in a family. They are given to understand that they should keep the best food available for the male members in the family, that they should eat less than the male members; that they should not raise their voice when they speak; that they should not go out of their house without permission from, and without being escorted by the male members. All these shape the girls’ thinking about live and the world, and go to establish their relationships with the male members in the family. As a result, they suffer, more than their male counterparts, from malnutrition and anaemia which make them vulnerable to various diseases, resulting in a high mortality rate. They develop a sense of self-effacement, self-denial and inferiority that persists throughout their lifetime as a inevitable benchmark of the weaker sex. As a result, married off even at 9 or 10 to a man of 40 or 50, a girl really has any say in decision-making in the family, let alone in society.
This discriminatory treatment has some long-term negative effects on the body and mind of the girl children and women in a family. They are given to understand that they should keep the best food available for the male members in the family, that they should eat less than the male members; that they should not raise their voice when they speak; that they should not go out of their house without permission from, and without being escorted by the male members. All these shape the girls’ thinking about live and the world, and go to establish their relationships with the male members in the family. As a result, they suffer, more than their male counterparts, from malnutrition and anaemia which make them vulnerable to various diseases, resulting in a high mortality rate. They develop a sense of self-effacement, self-denial and inferiority that persists throughout their lifetime as a inevitable benchmark of the weaker sex. As a result, married off even at 9 or 10 to a man of 40 or 50, a girl really has any say in decision-making in the family, let alone in society.
